Programme for anniversary celebration event
The Network for Education and Multidisciplinary Research (NEMRA) was founded on Saturday 22nd September, 2018. The anniversary celebration event is scheduled for Saturday 21st September 2019. It will be held at Uganda Christian University main campus in Mukono starting at 8:00 a.m.
It has been a fruitful one year of existence. The network membership has increased from a handful to hundreds of postgraduate research students and academics in Universities across Africa. These are from different disciplines including Social Sciences and the Humanities, Medicine and Engineering.
Core to NEMRA’s existence is research capacity building for Africa-based scholars. 15 research workshops were, to this effect, conducted in the first year in Kampala and Mbarara. These covered a wide array of topics including; Research Philosophy, Academic Writing, Searching for & Managing electronic resources, Effective Defence/Viva, Academic Research & National Development, Making sense of Qualitative Data, and Research Supervision.
NEMRA was also formed to provide a platform for interuniversity networking and collaboration for quality postgraduate education and research in Africa. NEMRA’s philosophy is that: “the whole is more than singular parts put together” in the process of demystifying the issues around doing academic research, enhancing professionalism and developing insights across a wide array of disciplines. The social media engagement of members has facilitated this kind of networking and peer support. Testimonies from individuals resonate phrases like “NEMRA has been my academic family….I have through this network gained confidence about my research…the PhD journey is no longer lonely….I have learnt a lot..”
The network has a grant writing team that is currently writing proposals for research funding with some already submitted for evaluation.
A lot more is expected in the second year including strengthening of discipline specific writing groups across regions, attachment of early career researchers to senior academics across the world for mentorship, engagement of stakeholders for uptake of the network’s research outputs and establishment of partnership relationships with bodies, agencies and institutions sharing the same or similar objectives.
